Dems Get Some Much Needed Good News

Special elections prove Democratic activists are still motivated and making a difference.

Last week, Democrat James Walkinshaw won a special election to replace Congressman Gerry Connolly in Virginia’s 11th Congressional District — by a whopping 50 points.

Democrats were always going to win this very blue district, so no one is surprised by the result. But the margin is notable. In 2024, Kamala Harris carried this district by 34 points. Walkinshaw’s victory represents a 15-point Democratic overperformance.

And this wasn’t an isolated incident. Democrats have been crushing special elections all year. Even in the two deep-red Florida congressional districts we lost, Democratic candidates significantly outperformed Harris’s 2024 margin.

It’s not just Congress, either. Democrats are winning down-ballot races. In March, Democrats flipped a Pennsylvania state senate seat in a district Trump had won by 15 points. A few weeks ago, Democrat Catelin Drey won an Iowa state senate seat by nearly 10 points in a district that had previously been Trump +11 — a 21-point swing toward Democrats.

The fact that Democrats are performing so well in actual elections runs counter to the broader narrative about the party. Why are Democrats winning races when our brand is supposedly in the toilet and much of our base is furious with our leadership?

---

Democrats Are the Party of Special Elections

You may recall this debate during the early stages of the 2024 cycle. Polls consistently showed Trump leading Biden nationally and in swing states. The White House and Biden’s allies countered that we should ignore the polls and look at actual election results — where Democrats were doing surprisingly well. In 2022, we held back a red wave (though we did lose the House), and we performed strongly in special elections.

At the time, I argued that these results were a validation of the Democratic campaign machinery and grassroots enthusiasm — but not necessarily predictive of a presidential election.

As many of you know, Democrats are the party of high-propensity voters. As data from Catalist, a Democratic analytics firm, shows: the more frequently someone votes, the more likely they are to vote Democratic.

That means as overall turnout increases, the additional, less-frequent voters who enter the electorate tend to lean Republican. In 2024, those voters broke for Trump — which explains how Biden could be trailing Trump in the polls even as Democrats were winning down-ballot races in red states like Kentucky.

---

Why You Should Pay Attention

Maybe I’m searching for some hope, but I’m not willing to dismiss these election wins as irrelevant. They don’t give Democrats a clean bill of health or guarantee midterm success, but they do matter in a few important ways:

1. Signs of Democratic Enthusiasm
The post-2024 narrative has been that Democrats are depressed and disillusioned, with the Resistance faded into memory. But the way Democrats are crushing special elections tells a different story. The base looks as fired up now as it was during Trump’s first term.

2. Campaigns Remain the Vehicle for Resistance
Trump’s shocking 2016 win spurred millions of Americans to volunteer, organize, donate, and even run for office. After the brutal disappointment of 2024, I worried those activists would step back. But these special election results suggest the opposite: our most dedicated political foot soldiers have doubled down. We need them to expand the map in 2026.

---

Not Predictive, But Informative

The 2023 special elections weren’t predictive of the 2024 presidential results, and I won’t argue the 2025 specials are predictive of the 2026 midterms. But I do think they tell us a little more about what to expect.

Here’s why: the super-voters who are disproportionately Democratic will make up a larger share of the electorate in 2026 than in 2024. Presidential election turnout is always higher than midterm turnout — the 2024 electorate was 40% larger than in 2022. When Trump isn’t on the ballot, many of the less-engaged voters who’ve recently leaned Republican tend to stay home.

There’s a long way to go until the midterms, and plenty of work to do. But I’ll take positive signs where I can get them.

If Democrats were losing these elections, we’d rightly be in a panic. The fact that we’re winning them — and by margins as large or larger than before — is very good news.

---